Chapter 7 - The Woman in Room SevenThey did not use the helicopter.
By the time police reached Dorsey's house, it was empty.
No body.
No broken furniture.
No Dorsey.
Only his laptop remained.
The microcassette was gone.
Fortunately, Nathan had recorded the call.
Luca watched the last ten seconds again.
Dorsey heard a door.
Stood.
Then someone approached.
Just before the screen went black, a reflection appeared in the window behind him.
A man.
Tall.
Gray suit.
Nathan enlarged the image.
No clear face.
But Luca recognized the posture.
“Leonard Crane.”
Victor's lawyer.
Nathan stared.
“You're sure?”
“I watched that man walk through boardrooms for twenty years.”
If Crane had traveled to Costa Rica personally, Victor was scared.
Good.
Fear made people careless.
But Luca's thoughts were elsewhere.
Evelyn.
His mother.
After the crash, Evelyn Costello had stayed beside his hospital bed for months.
She fed him when he couldn't hold a fork.
She slept in a chair beside him.
She cried when she thought he couldn't hear.
Then one morning she was gone.
Victor said she'd suffered a breakdown.
Sebastian claimed her grief had become dangerous.
Luca received one letter.
I cannot stay and watch you suffer. Please forgive me.
He hated her for years.
Then he learned to pretend he didn't care.
“Find her,” Luca told Nathan.
“I've searched before.”
“Search again.”
Nathan did.
Evelyn Costello had supposedly traveled to Switzerland, then France.
After that, nothing.
No passport activity.
No property.
No medical records.
No death certificate.
Nothing.
“She vanished too cleanly,” Nathan said.
“Because somebody made her vanish.”
They reopened estate records from the year after the crash.
Elena helped organize boxes of old household documents.
Mia drew pictures at the table.
Late one evening, she held up a page.
“I made you standing.”
Luca looked.
The drawing showed a giant stick figure wearing a black suit.
Beside him was a smaller stick figure with curly hair.
“Why am I taller than the house?”
“Because you're bossy.”
Elena burst out laughing.
Luca pretended offense.
Then Mia pointed to another figure.
“This is Mommy.”
Elena's stick figure held Luca's hand.
The adults went silent.
Mia continued coloring.
Luca cleared his throat.
“Children have no respect for workplace boundaries.”
Elena's cheeks turned pink.
Nathan saved them from the moment.
“I found something.”
He placed an estate visitor log on the table.
Six months after the accident, Evelyn had received a visitor.
Dr. Aaron Blake.
The neurosurgeon who later died.
The next morning, Evelyn vanished.
Luca stared at the entry.
“Blake told her.”
“Probably.”
“About my real prognosis.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would she disappear?”
Nathan flipped the page.
“Because two hours after Blake left, Sebastian Vale arrived.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
Sebastian remained at the estate for four hours.
Victor arrived later.
No departure time was recorded for Evelyn.
Only one vehicle left after midnight.
A private Costello ambulance.
Luca looked up.
“Where did it go?”
Nathan had already traced it.
St. Catherine's Behavioral Institute.
A private psychiatric hospital in Connecticut.
Closed nine years ago.
Luca's hands went cold.
“Patient records?”
“Sealed.”
“Unseal them.”
“I'll need a court order.”
Luca stared at him.
Nathan sighed.
“Or your way.”
“My way.”
Within forty-eight hours, a former St. Catherine's administrator agreed to meet.
Money helped.
Fear of prosecution helped more.
The administrator, Harold Pierce, remembered Evelyn.
“She was admitted under another name.”
“What name?”
“Eva Collins.”
“Diagnosis?”
Pierce looked ashamed.
“Acute psychosis.”
“Was she psychotic?”
“I wasn't her doctor.”
“Was she?”
Pierce hesitated.
“No.”
Luca's face hardened.
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
“Who admitted her?”
“Dr. Sebastian Vale.”
The room went silent.
Pierce continued.
“She repeatedly claimed her husband had been murdered and her son's medical treatment was fraudulent.”
Luca shut his eyes.
His mother had known.
She hadn't abandoned him.
She had tried to save him.
“What happened after eight months?”
“She was transferred.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Who ordered it?”
“Vale.”
Nathan leaned in.
“Alive?”
“She was alive when she left.”
Luca's breathing changed.
For the first time in twelve years, his mother was no longer a woman who abandoned him.
She was another victim.
“Find the transfer.”
Nathan uncovered a billing code.
Evelyn had been sent to Hawthorne House, a private long-term care residence in Maine.
Hawthorne House still existed.
But when Nathan called, administrators denied ever having a patient named Evelyn Costello or Eva Collins.
Luca traveled there secretly.
Elena came because she had experience with medical records.
Mia stayed with Nathan's wife.
The facility stood beside a lake surrounded by pine forest.
The director met them nervously.
“We already told your representative—”
Luca placed a photograph of Evelyn on the desk.
“My mother.”
“I don't recognize her.”
Luca placed another document beside it.
“A transfer payment from Costello Medical Holdings.”
The director went pale.
“I was not director at that time.”
“Find someone who was here.”
An elderly nurse named Ruth came downstairs.
The moment she saw Evelyn's photograph, she covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
Luca stood as much as he could using the chair arms.
“You knew her.”
Ruth started crying.
“She waited for you.”
Luca froze.
“What?”
“For years.”
“She's alive?”
Ruth stared at him.
“I thought you knew.”
“Where is she?”
Ruth explained.
Evelyn had lived at Hawthorne House for almost four years under heavy medication.
She repeatedly asked staff to contact her son.
Letters were confiscated.
Phone privileges restricted.
Then a young nurse secretly helped her mail one.
Three days later, Sebastian Vale arrived.
Evelyn was transferred again.
“Where?”
Ruth shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“Think.”
“I remember the ambulance.”
“What about it?”
“It had a logo.”
She closed her eyes.
“A blue tree.”
Elena gasped.
Luca turned.
“What?”
“I know that logo.”
“Where?”
“St. Gabriel Rehabilitation.”
Luca stared.
The closed hospital where his records had been altered.
Nathan searched corporate filings.
St. Gabriel's original building had been sold but never demolished.
The buyer?
Vale Medical Foundation.
Sebastian owned it.
That night, they drove back to New York.
At 11:40 p.m., Luca received a text from an unknown number.
STOP LOOKING FOR YOUR MOTHER.
A photograph followed.
Evelyn.
Older.
Thin.
Sitting beside a window.
Alive.
Luca stared at the image until his vision blurred.
Then another message appeared.
IF YOU WANT HER TO STAY ALIVE, TAKE YOUR MEDICATION TOMORROW MORNING.
Elena covered her mouth.
Nathan cursed.
Luca zoomed in on the photograph.
A clock.
A curtain.
A reflection.
Then he noticed something carved into the wooden windowsill.
Three letters.
LCG.
Luca Costello Giovanni.
His father's initials.
Luca knew that carving.
His father had made it forty years ago with a pocketknife.
“This isn't St. Gabriel,” Luca whispered.
Nathan looked closer.
“Then where?”
Luca's face went white.
“Our old family hunting lodge.”
Victor had inherited it after the crash.
His mother had been hidden on Costello property.
For years.
May you like
Luca looked at Nathan.
“Get the helicopter.”
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